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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 



THE RELIGION WORTH 
HAVING 



BY 

THOMAS NIXON CARVER 
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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1912 



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COPYRIGHT, I912, BY THOMAS NIXON CARVER 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published February iqi2 



©CLA305673 
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CONTENTS 

The New Sectarianism 3 

Is Religion of any Use? 9 

The Best Religion 12 

The Test of a Good Religion ... 17 

The Conservation of Human Energy 24 

Is Religion an End or a Means? . . 33 

The Work-bench vs. the Pig-trough 
Philosophy of Life 35 

The Struggle among Social Groups 42 

The Modified Struggle among Indi- 
viduals 45 

The Relation of the Struggle among 
Individuals to the Struggle among 
Groups 48 

The Stages in the Development of 
the Struggle among Individuals . 55 

v 



CONTENTS 

The Parable of the Talents and the 
Test of Performance 59 

Capital is socialized 63 

The Value of a Man to the Group 65 

Not who owns the Tools, but who 
consumes the product 68 

The Universality of the Law of 
Value 73 

Not a Question of Likes and Dislikes 77 

Is there a Moral Order of the Uni- 
verse ? 83 

The Moral Order of the Universe 
and God's Law 85 

Natural Selection and Divine Ap- 
proval 88 

Adaptation and Obedience .... 93 

The Crisis of Protestantism is an 
Economic Crisis 96 

The Separation of the Churches from 
the Masses a Normal Economic Re- 
sult .... 98 

vi 



CONTENTS 

Two Aspects of the Separation . .102 

Which is the True Church is a Ques- 
tion of the Future and not of the 
Past 105 

The Grounds of the Appeal of the 
True Church 110 

Two Kinds of Rich Men's and Poor 
Men's Churches 114 

The Way of Temporal Salvation . 117 

What the True Church can really 
do for the laboring classes . .122 

The Fellowship of the Productive 
Life « . 127 

The Higher vs. the Lower Faith . 129 

Who are the Meek? 130 

Reverence 132 

The Discipline of the Fellowship of 
the Productive Life 133 

The Church Militant 135 

What the Fellowship offers . . .137 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 



THE 
RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

We are developing a kind of religious 

liberalism which virtually says that one 

religion is as good as another, _ 

& & ' The new 

provided its adherents are sectari- 
equally honest and sincere. 
We do, of course, occasionally try to 
satisfy our Puritan consciences by insist- 
ing that every man must be true to his 
own ideals. In our moments of high re- 
ligious zeal we may even go so far as to 
suggest that the salvation of one's soul 
consists in beingtrue to one's ideals, even 
unto death; but that it makes any dif- 
ference what those ideals are, or that 
there is any way of telling the difference 

3 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

between a true and a false ideal, we are 
not quite prepared to say. 

This position is logically possible only 
under two assumptions: first, that no re- 
ligion is worth anything; second, that 
the only use of religion is to furnish its 
possessor with a kind of subjective satis- 
faction. One who holds that no religion 
is worth anything might consistently as- 
sume a superior air toward them all, and 
show his liberality by a large-minded 
willingness to humor them all alike 
as one humors the beliefs of children 
and other undeveloped minds. Again, 
one who holds that the only use of re- 
ligion is to furnish its possessor with a 
kind of subjective satisfaction might 
consistently say that one is as good as 
another, provided it satisfies its pos- 
sessor, provided it furnishes him with 
4 



THE NEW SECTARIANISM 

the kind of aesthetic or emotional sensa- 
tions which he enjoys, or contributes 
to his own inward peace and harmony. 
This places religion in the class of what 
the economist calls direct consumers' 
satisfactions, as distinct from productive 
agents, and the sole test of its value is 
the amount of satisfaction which it fur- 
nishes. One who holds such an opinion 
might hold that one source of subjective 
gratification is quite as good as another; 
that the sole test is, does it please the 
individual ? This would reduce religion 
to a matter of taste, and there is no 
quarreling over matters of taste in re- 
ligion any more than in perfumery or 
in flavoring extracts. 

But if religion is of any use outside 
the field of direct subjective satisfac- 
tion, if it is not to be labeled "for inter- 

5 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

nal use only," if, in short, it is a posi- 
tive factor in social and economic devel- 
opment, it would be the rarest chance 
that any two forms of religion should be, 
and it is inconceivable that they should 
all be, of precisely equal value. There- 
fore, one who believes that religion 
has a positive use outside the field of 
aesthetic or emotional happiness could 
scarcely be a liberal of the common 
type. If he were sincerely patriotic, he 
would be forced to look about and see 
which religion seemed to contribute 
most to the social and economic devel- 
opment of the people who possess it, and 
of the community in which it flourishes. 
Having found out, he would be forced 
to become an advocate of that religion. 
Moreover, the more he felt his social 
responsibility, and the more patriotic he 
6 



THE NEW SECTARIANISM 

was, the more passionately he would be 
forced to appeal to his fellow citizens to 
accept what he regarded as the best 
type of religion. He would be recreant 
to his duty to his country and his fellow 
men if he did not. 

Whether, therefore, we are to become 
impartial religious liberals of the com- 
mon sort, or ardent sectarians, will de- 
pend mainly upon our answer to such 
questions as: Is religion of any us e to 
the world outside the field of aesthetic, 
and emotional gratification? Is it a real., 
factor in the social and economic devel- 
opment of the community or the world ? 
If we answer these questions in the neg- 
ative, we may remain as indifferent as 
the common run of religious liberals are 
to-day; but if we answer it in the affirm- 
ative, we can scarcely help becoming 

7 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

sectarians, albeit sectarians of a new 
type. With our ardent sectarianism 
there may be combined a broad tolera- 
tion based upon our deep faith in the 
ultimate triumph of that which we re- 
gard as the best type of religion. But 
this affirmative belief would put an end 
to our mere indifference. We could no 
more help becoming advocates of that 
form of religion which seemed to us 
best calculated to promote the progress 
of the world than we can now help be- 
ing partisans of that form of govern- 
ment, or that political policy, which we 
think best suited to the same end. When 
the time comes, which God forefend, 
that government is looked upon as of 
no use except to furnish pastime and 
amusement to politicians, it will become 
as bad form to show political interest 
8 



IS RELIGION OF ANY USE? 

and fervor as it is now to show religious 
interest and fervor. Contrariwise, when 
the time comes that religion is regarded 
as having as much use as politics, it will 
seem as natural, and as good taste, to 
show religious enthusiasm as it is now 
to show political enthusiasm. 

Whether religion is of any use or 
not in the objective world depends up- 
on a variety of circumstances. Is re ii g ion 
There is no doubt whatever of any use? 
that it may be, and frequently is, a 
means of furnishing motive power, or 
of stimulating activity of one kind or 
another, in those who possess it. It is a 
means of turning potential into actual, 
or latent into active human energy. 
Next to the desire for wealth and social 
esteem, there is probably no motive 

9 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

which develops so much activity in the 
world of men as religious enthusiasm. 
A just appreciation of the dynamics 
and the kinetics of religion will destroy 
that form of religious dilettantism which 
now goes under the name of liberalism. 
The tombs and temples that have been 
built, the crusades that have been car- 
ried on, the pilgrimages that have been 
performed in such laborious ways, the 
sufferings that have been endured with 
such patience and fortitude, not, as the 
cynic sometimes asserts, in the hope of 
earning a reward in some other world, 
but as a sheer expression of religious 
feeling, the violent religious dances pro- 
longed often to the point of physical 
exhaustion, and even the intricate and 
overpowering ceremonial of our historic 
sects, all attest the power of religion to 
10 



IS RELIGION OF ANY USE? 

galvanize the human body into action, 
or to let loose the stores of latent energy 
which lie hidden away in the human 
organism. If the energy thus developed 
or transformed into motion can be di- 
rected toward useful ends instead of 
being wasted in unproductive channels, 
religion may become one of the most 
powerful agencies of human progress. 
That is to say, if we can add the motive 
of religious enthusiasm to the other mo- 
tives which now impel us to useful effort, 
we shall, of course, under the double 
stimulus of these combined motives, 
apply more energy to useful ends than 
we are now doing. That means pro- 
gress. If, for example, as much energy 
as is developed by one kind of religious 
enthusiasm, but wasted in a pilgrimage 
to Mecca on one's knees, could be de- 
ii 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

veloped by another kind of religious 
enthusiasm and applied to the clearing 
of a piece of stony land, or the draining 
of a swamp, there would be something 
tangible to show as the result of relig- 
ious feeling. This kind of religion would 
build up a prosperous and powerful 
community, which would support more 
life and support it more comfortably 
than any other. The teacher of such a 
religion could say with the 'utmost lit— 
eralness, and without the slightest taint 
of mysticism, "I am come that they 
might have life, and that they might 
have it more abundantly." Such a re- 
ligion would be a powerful factor in 
the progress of the world. 

This gives us the answer to the ques- 
tion, What is the best religion? That is 

12 



THE BEST RELIGION 

the best religion which (i) acts most 
powerfully as a spur to energy, j^ e |, est 
and (2) directs that energy reh s ion 
most productively. That is the most 
productive expenditure of energy which 
supports the most life and supports it 
most abundantly, which gives the larg- 
est control over the forces of nature 
and the most complete dominion over 
the world, and which enables men to 
control whatever environment happens 
to surround them and to live comfort- 
ably in it. 

Many of the pagan religions seem to 
perform the first of these functions some- 
what better than Christianity, at least 
than modern Christianity, does; but 
none of them has equaled Christianity 
in the second, that is, in the produc- 
tiveness with which its energy has been 

13 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

directed. Possibly it would be more ac- 
curate to say that they have all inter- 
fered with the productive expenditure 
of human energy more than Christianity 
has. The Christianity of the Middle 
Ages was probably more effective than 
that of the present in stimulating latent 
energy into action, but it was also most 
wasteful, or less efficient in the perform- 
ance of the second function, that of di- 
recting its energy economically and pro- 
ductively. One of the great religious 
problems of to-day — perhaps it is not 
too much to say that the great religious 
problem of to-day — is that of regain- 
ing the fervid, energizing quality of the 
early years of Christianity, of early Mo- 
hammedanism, or of some of the more 
primitive types of modern Christianity, 
and retaining or improving upon the in- 

14 



THE BEST RELIGION 

telligence and efficiency with which 
some of the more liberal sects are now 
directing what little energy they are 
still able to develop. In other words, 
the problem is to restore to the religion 
of to-day its original potency as a mo- 
tive force, and to combine with this the 
broad intelligence with which modern 
religious organizations are directing 
their rather feeble and half-hearted ef- 
forts. This would result in a combina- 
tion of the best features of mediaeval and 
modern Christianity and the elimina- 
tion of the bad features of both. 

The contrast between the mediaeval 
and the modern spirit, and the necessity 
for a combination of the good features 
of both, is nowhere set forth in stronger 
colors than in Mark Twain's story of 
the " Connecticut Yankee at the Court 

*5 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

of King Arthur." And there is nothing 
more significant in that remarkable book 
than the Yankee's way of dealing with 
a certain anchorite. This religious zealot 
had condemned himself to the treadmill 
practice of bending and unbending his 
body — bowing andrising — all daylong, 
day after day and year after year. That 
was his religion, — his whole religion 
as he conceived it, — and by its prac- 
tice he had won for himself a reputation 
for transcendent piety. But to the hard- 
headed, practical Yankee this looked 
like a waste of energy, and he began to 
study how to utilize it and turn it to 
some good purpose. Accordingly he 
arranged a device by which the old as- 
cetic was hitched to a sewing-machine, 
and as he continued to practice his re- 
ligion he was made to turn the machine, 
16 



TEST OF A GOOD RELIGION 

and thus his piety was turned to some 
account. 

In this story, where mediaeval asceti- 
cism and modern utilitarianism are so 
grotesquely contrasted, the 
author, who was quite as of a good 
much philosopher as humor- 
ist, embodied the very life and spirit of 
our Western civilization, especially of 
our American civilization, whose pe- 
culiar product he was, and of which he 
was both spokesman and prophet. That 
the same practical spirit, with the same 
productive aim, is to dominate the re- 
ligion, the morality, and the civilization 
of the future, we may safely predict. 
This will be the dominating spirit, be- 
cause any religion, whatever its name, 
any system of morality, whatever its 

17 



v 






THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

origin, any civilization, wherever or by 
whatever people it is developed, which 
is dominated by such a spirit as this, will 
be able to hold dominion over all others 
or to exterminate them altogether. The 
religion which does not take on this 
practical spirit is doomed to extinction, 
and can no more hold out against it than 
the old civilizations of India, China, and 
Japan could hold out against the practi- 
cal spirit of Western civilization. When 
Japan accepted this practical spirit she 
virtually decided to prolong her life and 
independence. To have rejected it would 
have been to decide in favor of subjec- 
tion or death. The same alternative is 
held out to the religions of to-day. Those 
which accept the domination of the spirit 
of efficiency and productiveness are vot- 
ing for their own survival and dominion. 
18 



TEST OF A GOOD RELIGION 

Those which accept rather the spirit of 
impractical mysticism, or which con- 
tinue to waste human energy in motion- 
less contemplation, aesthetic pleasure, 
or emotional joy, are voting for their 
own subjection or extermination. 

Every one is familiar with the intense 
struggle for existence that is carried on 
among the trees of a forest. It is as- 
serted that the struggle is so intense, 
and the issue of life and death is so 
sharply drawn among the young pines 
of a thicket that the cutting of an inch 
from the top of one of them will doom 
it to ultimate extinction. Even that 
slight difference puts it at a disadvan- 
tage in the struggle for light, and it 
never regains what was lost, but falls 
farther and farther behind and is event- 
ually killed by its less unfortunate rivals. 
19 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

Now, let us imagine that trees were 
conscious beings and capable of having 
religion. Let us suppose, further, that 
one set of trees possessed a religion 
which stimulated growth and helped 
them in the struggle for soil and light, 
while another set of trees possessed 
a. religion which retarded growth and 
hindered in the struggle. Is there any 
doubt as to which of these religions 
would ultimately dominate the forest? 
Those trees which happened to possess 
the religion which helped them would 
survive and those which happened to 
possess the kind of religion which hin- 
dered them would perish, and with them 
would perish their religion. Fortunately, 
or unfortunately as the case may be, 
the issue of life and death is never so 
clearly and sharply drawn among hu- 
20 



TEST OF A GOOD RELIGION 

man beings as it is among trees, but in 
the long run the results appear to be 
very much the same. If that be true, it 
will follow that the religion which best 
fits men for the struggle with the forces 
of the world, which enables them to 
survive in this struggle, will eventually 
be left in possession of the world. This 
view is not so unorthodox as it may at 
first seem to some of our more amiable 
Christian brethren. They will find that 
the first recorded command in our sacred 
Book is to be fruitful and multiply and 
people the earth and subdue it and have 
dominion over it. It would be an illog- 
ical kind of religion which would begin 
by issuing this command, and then de- 
feat itself by unfitting its adherents for 
the accomplishment of the end in view. 
The religion worth having is the relig- 
21 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

ion which will enable its adherents to 
accomplish that grim purpose. 

The religion worth having is the re- 
ligion which brings the largest success 
in this final and ultimate sense to the 
peoples and nations which adopt it, and 
enables them to survive in competition 
with peoples and nations possessing any 
other type of religion. The religion is 
not worth having which brings failure 
in this physical and practical sense, 
which would unfit for the struggle for 
dominion the peoples and nations which 
adopt it, and cause them to succumb to 
the superior surviving power of other 
peoples with a more productive type of 
religion. The religion which enervates 
or subdues the spirit of a people, which 
does not develop their latent energy, 
or which wastes their energy in a kind 

22 



TEST OF A GOOD RELIGION 

of effort which does not support life or 
support it abundantly, will fail because 
it will cause the failure of the people 
who are handicapped by it. But the re- 
ligion which stimulates to high endeavor 
and develops the latent energy of its 
people, and directs that energy wisely 
and productively, will succeed because 
the people who are fortunate enough to 
possess it will succeed and hold domin- 
ion over the world. The world belongs 
by a law of nature, which is only another 
way of saying that it belongs by divine 
right, to that religion which combines 
most completely the enthusiasm of the 
old ascetic with the practical intelligence 
of the Yankee in the story just quoted. 
The people who possess such a religion 
will, other things equal, develop within 
themselves more productive energy than 
23 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

they who possess a religion which en- 
ervates and depresses. Again, such a 
people will direct their energy more effi- 
ciently and productively and gain a 
larger control over the forces of nature. 
Such a combination of virtues will de- 
liver the world into their hands and give 
them dominion over the rest of man- 
kind' as surely as mankind has been 
given dominion over the rest of the ani- 
mal creation. 

But what does it mean in the concrete 
to direct human energy intelligently and 
The con- efficiently? We ought all to 

servation agree that such exercitations 
of human 

energy as those of the whirling derv- 
ishes, or of the pilgrims who travel long 
distances on their knees, are examples 
of wasted or misdirected energy. Are 
24 



CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 

we ready to accept the eminently wise 
and practical saying of Zoroaster, that 
" He who sows the ground with care 
and diligence acquires a greater stock 
of religious merit than he could gain by 
the repetition of ten thousand prayers " ? 
Such an expenditure of energy as this 
is calculated to sustain human life and 
to increase the fund of surplus energy 
available for the furthur conquest of 
the world. The race or the people which 
thus economizes its energy will increase 
in numbers and power more rapidly 
than a race or people which wastes its 
energy in ways which do not support 
life, or which do not increase the fund 
of surplus energy over and above that 
which is necessary for the support of 
daily life, — a fund available for the fur- 
ther conquest of nature. 

*5 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

This is not to be construed into mean- 
ing that all the energy of a people should 
be devoted directly to the work of pro- 
ducing food, clothing, and shelter, or 
the multiplication of numbers up to the 
point where it will take all the energy 
of the people to provide enough food, 
clothing, and shelter to sustain the life 
of its millions. A race or people which 
finds itself in a position where all its 
energy is required to provide the means 
of sustaining life is in a singularly weak 
position either for defense against ene- 
mies or for experimenting, pioneering, 
and adventuring, which are necessary for 
the further conquest of nature. It does 
distinctly mean, however, that every 
expenditure of energy which does not, 
either directly or indirectly, immedi- 
ately or remotely, strengthen the people 
26 



CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 

and fit them for that conquest, is to be 
condemned. Every form of consump- 
tion or sensual gratification which weak- 
ens and enervates is to be called a vice. 
The fact that it weakens and enervates, 
that it interferes with the fitness of the 
people for that conquest, is what makes 
it a vice. But a lavish expenditure of 
energy, even in the form of amusement, 
if it is the kind of amusement which 
strengthens the body, or stimulates the 
pioneering and adventurous spirit, may 
be commended on the ground that it 
is strengthening the people, increasing 
their productive power, or increasing 
the fund of surplus energy which may 
be devoted to other purposes than the 
mere sustentation of life or the gratifi- 
cation of the senses. 

Expenditures on art, literature, philo- 
27 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

sophy, and religion are also to be com- 
mended on the same ground, but they 
must meet the same test. That is to say, 
the test of their soundness is not do they 
please, but do they strengthen the peo- 
ple, do they contribute to the success 
of the people in the process of active 
adaptation, or the conquest of nature. 
If these products of the human spirit in- 
spire the practical, conquering virtues, 
they are sound: but if they cater to the 
vices which weaken and enervate they 
are vicious. If they stimulate economic 
virility, and increase the courage, pa- 
tience, and fortitude with which men 
face their tasks, and give them a clearer 
vision as to the meaning of their tasks, 
and a sounder sense of value in the ap- 
praisal of the comparative worth of dif- 
ferent kinds of work, they are fulfilling 
28 



CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 

their function; but if they lull to a life 
of ease and self-indulgence, they are a 
handicap in the struggle for possession 
of the world, and are therefore funda- 
mentally and essentially vicious. The 
musicians, for example, are as truly a part 
of the fighting force of the army as are 
the men who handle the guns, provided 
the music be such as to stimulate and 
inspire the martial virtues. Imagine 
military men soberly discussing such + 
themes as music for music's sake! No 
matter how the verbal argument might 
run, or which party might have the ad- 
vantage in that windy contest, there is 
one final argument which would settle 
the question. The army which proceeded 
upon the theory that music was its own 
excuse for being, and that it made no 
difference what its effect was upon the 
29 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

army provided it was beautiful and pleas- 
ing to connoisseurs, would be soundly 
whipped when it came in contact with 
an army which proceeded upon the op- 
posite theory, namely, that music ex- 
isted for the purpose of helping the army 
in the business of war, and justified its 
existence only in proportion as it con- 
tributed to victory. 

Whether we contemplate a military 
group engaged in a conflict with other 
men, or an industrial group engaged 
in the conquest of nature, the question 
is fundamentally the same. In the one 
case, adaptation depends upon military 
efficiency, in the other case upon indus- 
trial efficiency, and everywhere nature's 
great command is "adapt or die." 
Everything must be tested, in the last 
analysis, by its bearing upon the great 

30 



CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 

problem of adaptation. An army may, 
by long practice of the military virtues, 
reach a position of relative security and, 
imagining itself unassailable, begin to 
waste its energies in the pursuit of 
pleasure. Then the theory that the army 
exists for the sake of its military bands, 
its artists, its chaplains, and other acces- 
sories, may gain headway. But event- 
ually this tendency will bring itself to 
an end by the extermination of the army 
itself when it meets another army with 
less degenerate ideals. Similarly, an in- 
dustrial society may, by long practice 
of the economic virtues, bring itself to 
a position of relative economic security. 
Imagining itself unassailable, it may 
then begin to waste its energies, to 
devote itself to graceful consumption, 
eminent leisure, or motionless contem- 

3i 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

plation of its own perfections, instead 
of self-discipline, efficient production, 
colonization, etc. Under such condi- 
tions the carnal mind is peculiarly open 
to the arguments of the " pig-trough " 
philosophy of life, which conceives that 
the purpose of life, of labor, and of 
wealth is enjoyment. But this process 
also will bring itself to an end because 
the society in which such a degenerating 
process gains headway will eventually 
give way before a society with sounder 
ideals. The world belongs, by a law of 
nature, to the disciplined and produc- 
tive races and not to those who devote 
themselves to graceful consumption and 
eminent leisure. No amount of lofty 
discourse in the field of transcendental 
ethics, which is, after all, only a subli- 
mated form of the pig-trough philoso- 

3 2 



IS RELIGION AN END OR A MEANS? 

phy, to which prosperous societies are 
singularly addicted, can get us away 
from this stern fact. 

In the philosophy of adaptation, relig- 
ion is no more an end in itself than music, 

art, or literature, though its 

Is religion 

devotees, like the devotees of an end or 
these other forms of " culture," a means 
have sometimes schooled themselves to 
insist with straight faces that it is the sole 
end and aim of existence. Any society 
which conceives that it exists for the 
support of its religion will be as little 
likely to succeed in the struggle for a 
possession of a portion of the earth's 
surface as an army would if it were to 
devote all its energies to the support 
of its chaplains and its religious cere- 
monialism. Because they are unable to 

33 



X 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

avoid this hard fact, the devotees of all 
these specialized forms of "culture" 
are accustomed to take refuge in a 
high and mighty attitude of superiority 
toward " mere " utility, " mere " suc- 
cess, " mere " everything except their 
own varieties of dilettantism. They are 
like the proud Brahmin who consoled 
himself that though he were compelled 
to submit to the English he could still 
despise them, and though compelled at 
times to have dealings with them it 
was permitted to him to bathe after- 
wards. They are, like this Brahmin, 
mercifully prevented by their own men- 
tal ophthalmia from seeing either the 
humor or the tragedy of the situation. 
Any form of culture which handicaps 
the people who possess it in the strug- 
gle for survival will eventually perish 

34 



THE PIG-TROUGH PHILOSOPHY 

with its people, and only those forms 
which help in that struggle will event- 
ually be left in possession of the world. 
The Brahmin and all his kind receive 
their lives every day as a gift from 
their more powerful rivals, who hu- 
manely desist for a time from exter- 
minating them. To all such devotees 
the gospel of science is, "Except ye 
repent ye shall all likewise perish." Re- 
pentance, in this sense, means the aban- 
donment of the cult which weakens 
and the adoption of the cult which 
strengthens for the struggle for survival. 

The pig-trough philosophy of life, in 
its variously solidified and The work- 
etherealized forms, amounts bencl ? vs - 

the pig- 



substantially to this. The end trough 
:ry i 

35 



of life and industry is enjoy- of life# 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

ment We produce in order that we 
may consume, though our consumption 
may be gross or refined, may consist in 
filling our bellies, or in loafing and in- 
viting our souls. To the carnal mind it 
appears self-evident that the end of all 
industry is the enjoyment of the fruits of 
it. If products increase sufficiently, it ap- 
pears ridiculous that we should not in- 
dulge ourselves in some way or another. 
What is wealth for but to be enjoyed? 
is asked as though it admitted of but 
one answer. If we have more energy 
than is necessary to sustain life, why 
should we not burn up our surplus en- 
ergy in eating and drinking, in art, lit- 
erature, or religion, according as our 
interests are fleshly or neurotic? To 
such a mind it is inconceivable that the 
end of production might be further pro- 

36 



THE WORK-BENCH PHILOSOPHY 

duction, that we should consume in 
order that we might produce, that if we 
have more energy than is necessary to 
sustain life the surplus should be used 
for further productive achievement, for 
a further conquest of the forces of na- 
ture, and an extension of our dominion 
over the world. The latter is the work- 
bench philosophy of life, and it is in 
competition with the pig-trough philo- 
sophy. In the end the work-bench philo- 
sophy will survive, because the people 
who adopt it and practice it will beat 
in competition those who adopt and 
practice the pig-trough philosophy. 

There is a disposition to laugh the 
work-bench philosophy out of court in a 
time of general prosperity, but the merits 
of the two contrasted philosophies are 
not to be settled by any such cachinna- 
37 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

tory contest. Nature has no sense of hu- 
mor, — at least, according to vaudeville 
standards. There is another form of con- 
test, upon the issue of which our judg- 
ment must depend. Which philosophy 
will win in the contest for the posses- 
sion of the resources of the earth? Let 
us imagine two armies dominated by 
the two different philosophies, one hold- 
ing to the idea that the purpose of a 
campaign is to secure loot and that the 
purpose of loot is enjoyment, either 
sensual, aesthetic, or religious; the other 
holding steadfastly to the idea that the 
purpose of campaigning is dominion, 
that loot, if taken, is to be used as an 
addition to the resources of the cam- 
paign and not for self-indulgence. Any 
temporary success of the first army 
would work its speedy undoing and its 

38 



THE WORK-BENCH PHILOSOPHY 

final defeat, whereas every success of 
the second would strengthen it and 
equip it for further victories. Imagine, 
again, two industrial nations, one of 
which is dominated by the idea that the 
purpose of industry is wealth and that 
the purpose of wealth is enjoyment, 
while the other holds steadily, genera- 
tion after generation, to the idea that 
the purpose of industry is dominion, and 
that every accumulation of wealth is to 
be utilized as equipment for further con- 
quest of the forces of nature and further 
dominion over the earth. A result will 
follow in this case similar to that which 
would follow in the case of the two 
armies. This is a solemn kind of logic 
which will not be laughed away, and in 
comparison with which all the argu- 
ments of the pig-trough philosopher 

39 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

are the merest casuistry. One of the 
great lessons of history is that the peoples 
who have succumbed to the insidious 
appeal to self-indulgence have grown 
weak and have lost ground as compared 
with the more virile and rugged peoples 
who have retained a simpler and stur- 
dier view of life. 

To the carnal mind it may still look 
illogical that men should eat in order 
that they may work, or consume in order 
that they may produce, — that the fruits 
of industry are not to be used for en- 
joyment, but to sustain life and energy 
for further industry. Yet, under the laws 
of the world in which we live, they who 
follow this rule seem to prosper more 
and last longer than they who follow 
the opposite rule. It is useless to con- 
tend that this is the wrong kind of a 
40 



THE WORK-BENCH PHILOSOPHY 

universe, and that such illogical results 
ought not to follow, and would not if 
the universe were differently organized. 
This happens to be this kind of a uni- 
verse, and we must get our conclusions 
as to what is right and wrong from an 
inductive study of the experiences of 
men in their struggles to adapt them- 
selves to it. Pleasure and pain are mere 
signboards, pointing the way, and re- 
quiring a seeing eye and an under- 
standing heart for their proper reading. 
Pleasure is a signboard which reads, 
" This way lies life," and pain is a sign- 
board which reads, " This way lies 
death." They who read these signs cor- 
rectly and are guided by them shall 
achieve life, but they who mistake them 
shall achieve their own extermination. 
They who seek pleasure as an end, 

4i 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

however, are mere collectors of sign- 
boards, who find no pleasure in them after 
they are collected, and are impeded by 
them on the way of life. 

Againstthe over-hasty conclusion that 

any kind of individual conduct which 

rm . pays the individual is there- 

The strug- r J 

gle among fore good conduct and justi- 
fied by the laws of natural se- 
lection, it is only necessary to mention 
the fact that, in the case of the human 
species, the struggle for existence is 
primarily and dominantly a struggle 
among groups. In the process of adapt- 
ation it has become a struggle among 
those territorial groups, exercising sov- 
ereignty, called states or nations. It is 
only among these sovereign groups that 
the primordial character of the struggle 
42 



STRUGGLE IN SOCIAL GROUPS 

persists; every other group, and every 
individual struggle is under discipline 
of one kind or another, according to the 
character of the state of which it or he 
is a part. This large fact is well summed 
up in one of Kipling's "Jungle Book" 
rhymes, — 

" For the strength of the pack is the wolf, 
And the strength of the wolf is the pack." 

It is the pack as a whole which strug- 
gles to maintain itself in the midst of 
the jungle, and, in order to succeed and 
survive, it must discipline its members. 
The pack, like the state, is itself sover- 
eign and therefore undisciplined except 
by the forces of nature and the compe- 
tition of rival packs. That is a good 
wolf, from the standpoint of the pack, 
whose conduct, however unprofitable 
to himself, is such as to strengthen the 
43 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

pack and help it to succeed. That is a 
bad wolf whose conduct, however pro- 
fitable to himself, is such as to weaken 
the pack as a whole and interfere with 
its success. From the standpoint of the 
individual wolf, that is a good pack 
which is so organized and disciplined 
as to dominate the jungle. The average 
member of such a pack is better off than 
the average member of a pack so badly 
organized and disciplined as to be over- 
come by the hostile forces of the jun- 
gle. That pack is best fitted to succeed 
and to dominate the jungle which re- 
wards with honor, power, and authority 
those individuals whose conduct con- 
tributes most to the success of the whole, 
and penalizes those individuals whose 
conduct contributes least to the success 
of the whole, or interferes most with 
44 



INDIVIDUAL STRUGGLES 

that success. Substitute "man" for 
"wolf," "society" for "pack," and 
"world " for " jungle," in the foregoing 
sentences, and we shall have, in a nut- 
shell, the whole theory of rational mo- 
rality. 

Though the human struggle for exist- 
ence has become primarily an inter-group 
struggle, yet the struggle The modi- 

among individuals within the fi f d strug " 
° gle among 

group is by no means elimin- individuals 
ated. It has been modified, controlled, and 
directed so as to promote the efficiency 
of the group in its inter-group struggle. 
Every form of struggle among the indi- 
viduals of the group which detracts from 
the strength and efficiency of the whole, 
or interferes with its success, will be 
suppressed, and every form of individual 

45 



/ 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

struggle which adds to the strength of 
the whole and promotes its success will 
be kept alive by the group whose law- 
makers and religious leaders are wise. 
The group which fails to enforce both 
these rules is committing self-destruc- 
tion. Every process or method by which 
an individual might enrich himself or 
promote his own interests at the expense 
of the group will be declared a crime 
or misdemeanor, — that is what these 
words ought to mean; but every pro- 
cess or method by which an individual 
may enrich himself or promote his own 
interest by contributing to the needs of 
the group must be cherished and pro- 
tected. To enrich one's self by produc- 
ing what the community needs does 
not impoverish but enriches the com- 
munity. The more individuals there are 

46 



INDIVIDUAL STRUGGLES 

who get rich by this method and the 
richer they get, the better it is for the 
community as a whole. The more mil- 
lionaires there are, the better off the 
rest of the people are, provided every 
millionaire has produced his millions, 
that is, provided he has added millions 
to the total wealth of the community, and 
provided he continues to use his accumu- 
lations as tools for further production 
rather than for personal consumption or 
unproductive gratification. But every 
dollar which a man gains, whether he be 
rich or poor, by methods which do not 
add to the strength of the whole com- 
munity, is just so much subtracted from 
the surviving power of the whole. And 
every dollar's worth of wealth which a 
man consumes, whether he be rich or 
poor, in ways which do not maintain or 

47 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

add to his efficiency as a producer, is so 
much wasted power and is subtracted 
from the power of the whole. 

The group which so regulates the 

struggle among its individuals as to se- 

cure the largest measure of 

tion of the success to those who strength- 
struggle 
among in- en the group most, and to 

dividuals to \^ r [ n g poverty, failure, or pun- 
gle among ishmentto those who strength- 
en it least or interfere most 
with its success, is the group which 
will survive in the struggle with all 
other groups who are less efficient in 
this form of regulation and discipline. 
Upon this form of regulation the very 
life of the group will ultimately depend, 
but it brings failure and poverty to those 
unfortunate individuals who are not 

4 8 



RELATIONS OF STRUGGLES 

worth their keep, that is, who require for 
their own sustenance during their whole 
lifetime as much as they contribute to 
the strength of the whole. Again, under 
such a regulated struggle as this it will 
happen that the productive resources 
of the country will pass more and more 
into the hands of those who are capable 
of handling them most productively. 
This is, of course, quite as essential as 
it would be for the fighting resources 
of an army to be handled by those who 
were capable of handling them most 
effectively. Moreover, this is the clear 
and obvious meaning of the parable of 
the talents, which does not cause the 
slightest difficulty to one who accepts 
the work-bench philosophy, and who re- 
gards wealth as tools for furthur pro- 
duction rather than as means of self- 

49 



>c 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

gratification. To the pig-trough philoso- 
pher, however, this parable has always 
been a stumbling-block, and he has in- 
vented various mystical interpretations 
to avoid the plain and obvious economic 
meaning which it was intended to con- 
vey. If wealth is tools for the further 
conquest of the earth, it would be a 
queer idea of a Kingdom of God which 
would not take the talents from the men 
who could not use them productively 
and give them to the men who had 
shown the greatest capacity to use them 
to the advantage of the Kingdom, 

This is precisely what happens when 
the struggle among individuals, that is, 
economic competition, is properly regu- 
lated by the group. The farmer who 
can make a farm produce the most, over 
and above what he requires for his own 
5o 



RELATIONS OF STRUGGLES 

sustenance, will, in the long run, get 
possession of that farm, unless prevented 
by fraud or violence on the part of some 
other individual, or by unwise regulation 
and interference on the part of the state. 
Under the operation of well-enforced 
laws, and in the absence of unwise in- 
terference, the inevitable tendency is for 
the land of a country to get into the 
possession of the best farmers, and for 
it to be distributed in such quantities as 
give the best results to the country as a 
whole. Where farms are too small to 
get the best results, they are combined, 
as is being done in Iowa and the Middle 
West to-day. Where they are too large, 
they tend to be subdivided, as is be- 
ing done in the Far West. Any attempt 
to force a different distribution would 
weaken rather than strengthen the na- 

5i 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

tion. Even the Kingdom of God, as 
expounded by the Great Teacher him- 
self, embodied this principle. 

The problem of getting the economic 
resources of the nation into the hands 
of those who can handle them most 
productively has never been solved so 
satisfactorily as by this method of pro- 
ductive competition. As with the farms, 
so with the shops and the business 
establishments. The business men who 
can make these resources produce the 
most, over and above their own suste- 
nance, will eventually get possession of 
them, unless prevented by inefficient 
regulation of the competitive process, 
or by unwise interference with it. This 
inefficient regulation or unwise inter- 
ference will, like unwise land laws, 
handicap the nation by putting its re- 
52 



RELATIONS OF STRUGGLES 

sources in the hands of less efficient 
men, which is, in the end, quite as 
disastrous in industrial as in military 
activity. This is by far the largest as- 
pect of economic competition; but it 
is an aspect which the opponents of 
that system either will not or cannot 
see. 

The genius has never arisen who 
could even suggest a way of distribut- 
ing the wealth or the places of power 
and responsibility in a nation without a 
struggle of one kind or another as a test. 
The very conceptions of wealth and 
value imply scarcity, and signify that 
men want more of certain things than 
they have got. Only such things possess 
any value, that is, they are the only things 
for which men will give anything in ex- 
change or take any trouble to get. The 

53 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

very fact that men are trying to get them 
is what enables the possessor of any one 
of them to sell it for a price, and the 
reason men try to get them is that men 
want more of them than they have got. 
That is what scarcity means. Such things 
alone make up the category of economic 
goods, which are the object of economic 
endeavor. The distribution of wealth 
means absolutely nothing except the dis- 
tribution of things which need distribut- 
ing because they are scarce, or which 
need to be properly distributed because 
if one man gets too much some other 
must get too little. This could not be 
true of anything which was not scarce. 
No one can think in terms of economic 
wealth without thinking in terms of a 
struggle of one kind or another. 



54 



FORMS OF STRUGGLE 

The struggle among individuals with- 
in the group for wealth, place, power, 
etc., has gone through three The stages 

distinct stages. The first stage ' m *« de " 
° velopment 

is struggle by destruction, that of the 
is, private war; the second is l m ^ g e 
struggle by' palaver, that is, individuals 
politics; the third is struggle by pro- 
duction, that is, economic competition. 
Chicanery has accompanied all three, 
but has not been essential to any of them. 
In war it consisted of using poisoned 
weapons and other devices contrary to 
the code of honor; in politics, it consists 
in trickery, demagogy, tall mendacity, 
etc. ; and in economic competition it con- 
sists in deception, adulteration, fraud, 
and certain forms of high finance. In 
the several stages through which the 
struggle has passed, victory has gone re- 

55 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

spectively to the fighter, the talker, and 
the producer, though the ubiquitous 
trickster, like the jackal, has always been 
present and has come in for a share of 
the spoils, whatever the form of the 
struggle. 

In the first stage, the individual suc- 
ceeds best who inflicts the most injury 
upon his fellows. His method of fight- 
ing benefits no one but himself. But the 
very nature of this struggle necessarily 
weakened the group to which he be- 
longed and had to be suppressed, other- 
wise the group itself would be destroyed. 
Even the pack of wolves had to suppress 
fighting among its own members, in or- 
der that the whole fighting force might 
be conserved for the struggle against 
the forces of the jungle. In the human 
species the next stage was to substitute 
56 



STRUGGLE BY PALAVER 

the method of struggle by palaver, which 
was much more economical than strug- 
gle by private war. In this stage the suc- 
cess of the individual depends upon his 
skill in paying court either to the sov- 
ereign person or the sovereign people. It 
is by this method that men are chosen 
to fill places of power and responsibility. 
In this stage, the talkers beat the fighters 
and get all the best places, and get con- 
trol of all the large interests. The fight- 
ers did not like this at first and frequently 
rebelled, and tried to carry the struggle 
back to the more primitive stage, know- 
ing that, in that form of struggle, they 
would stand a better chance of success. 
They were, of course, plain reactiona- 
ries, but they called themselves revolu- 
tionists and progressives because they 
were trying to change the system. 

57 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

But the method of palaver, while an 
improvement over the method of fight- 
ing, is a poor way of finding the best 
men and putting them in charge of the 
positions of responsibility. It is like 
deciding which is the fastest horse by 
argumentation and voting, instead of 
putting them all to the test on the race- 
course. There are, to be sure, some 
political offices for which men can be 
chosen in no other way than by argu- 
mentation and voting. It is a race among 
candidates, but it is a race for votes and 
not a contest in productive achieve- 
ment. Where no other method is pos- 
sible we must be content with this one, 
but no discerning person would imagine 
that it results in getting the best men 
in office. The crowd, however, in its 
enthusiasm over its new found toy, the 

58 



TEST OF PERFORMANCE 

ballot, probably imagines that its choice 
is always the best possible one, never 
having a chance to become disillusioned 
by a practical test. If there were no other 
method of picking out the fastest horse 
and hitching him to the carriage of state, 
the crowd would probably feel a kind 
of supernal wisdom after it had chosen 
its favorite, and would never doubt that 
it had made the wisest possible choice; 
but the discerning horseman would 
know how shallow such judgments are 
and how much better the actual test of 
performance is than the test of popu- 
larity. 

Fortunately it is possible, in an in- 
dustrial society, to apply the test of per- 
formance, which was the test applied 
by the Master in the parable of the tal- 

59 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

ents, in the selection of men for most of 
The parable the responsible positions. This 

ents and " * s ^ e test actually applied, for 

the test of example, in the selection of 
perform- 
ance men to run the farms, since 

the farms tend to get into the hands 
of those who can make them produce 
the largest surplus over and above the 
sustenance of the farmers. This sur- 
plus is the fund available for the fur- 
ther conquest of nature, and the farms 
and businesses tend inevitably into the 
hands of those who can make them 
contribute most to this fund. This is a 
better test than the method of palaver, 
argumentation, and voting, and it results 
in putting the resources of the nation 
into the hands of a more efficient class 
of men. Under this test, however, the 
producers beat the talkers and get the 
60 



TEST OF PERFORMANCE 

best positions, that is, the producers 
come into control of the resources of 
the country. The talkers do not like this 
result any better than the fighters liked 
it when they were beaten by the talkers. 
Accordingly the talkers are trying to 
restore the more primitive method of 
struggle by palaver, knowing that they 
would stand a better chance under that 
system. That is why so many large talk- 
ers, and so few large producers, are so- 
cialists. Here, again, the plain reaction- 
aries call themselves revolutionists and 
progressives, merely because they are 
proposing a change. 

Some of these reactionaries, however, 
are deceived into thinking that they 
would be doing away with the struggle, 
and creating a condition of universal 
love and good-will by merely putting 
61 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

all industry directly into the hands of 
the state to be managed by political 
methods. This form of deception ap- 
peals very strongly to some of our re- 
ligionists of the more liberal and ami- 
able sort. But so long as more is better 
than less of any desirable thing, there 
will be struggle among men to get more. 
So long as one position in society is bet- 
ter than another, there will be struggle 
among men to get the more desirable 
position. The only question is as to the 
method of carrying on the struggle. 
There is just as intense a struggle in 
politics and the civil service as there 
is in industry. Moreover, the political 
struggle is of a meaner kind, because 
success depends less upon productive 
efficiency and more upon impudence 
and mendacity. The only effect of do- 
62 



CAPITAL IS SOCIALIZED 

ing away with economic competition 
would be to place everything under 
political competition, or a universal civil 
service. But the group which depends 
upon this method of selecting men for 
responsible positions, where the eco- 
nomic test of productive efficiency is 
possible, will lose ground as compared 
with the group which adopts the more 
accurate test of fitness and capacity, 
namely, which actually puts the farms, 
shops, factories, etc., into the hands of 
those who can make them produce the 
most and who can therefore pay the 
most to get possession of them. 

Another delusion which appeals 
strongly to the shallow mind is that pub- 
lic property is more service- Capital is 
able than private property to socialized 

63 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

the public. It is difficult for some people 
to see that all productive property is 
serving the public and must serve the 
public if the owner is to get any income 
from it. The more efficiently a piece of 
property is managed and the more it is 
made to produce over and above what 
the manager consumes, the better it is 
for the public or the group. All capital 
is socialized, whether the technical, legal 
ownership be lodged in an individual or 
the public. Only consumers' goods are 
individualized, — that is, devoted to in- 
dividual gratification. Capital consists 
of the tools of production, but consum- 
ers' goods are means of individual satis- 
faction. The only way by which the 
owner of tools can get any good from 
them is by using them productively, that 
is, serviceably. That is all that can be 
64 



VALUE OF A MAN TO THE GROUP 

done with them when they are owned 
by the public. The only real question 
is whether they are likely to be used 
more productively when owned' by the 
public and managed by a public offi- 
cial, than when owned and managed 
by a private individual. This is largely a 
question of the accuracy of the political 
as compared with the economic method 
of testing men for economic positions. 

Under the strictest economic test, 

where chicanery is not permitted, the 

victory goes to the man whose ^ 

J & The value 

production exceeds his con- of a man to 
sumption by the largest mar- 
gin. This margin represents the rate 
of his accumulation of capital, and that 
determines his competitive power. That 
is, the rate of his accumulation deter- 

65 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

mines his power to purchase land and 
tools. Therefore the land and tools will 
pass more and more under the control 
of those whose rate of accumulation is 
highest. They whose rate of accumula- 
tion of capital is highest will gain the 
largest control over the resources of the 
country and will therefore direct and 
manage these resources. 

Not only does the individual's com- 
petitive power depend upon the margin 
of his production over his consumption, 
that is, upon his rate of accumulation, 
but his value to the group, or his con- 
tribution to the competitive power of the 
group in its struggle with other groups, 
depends upon precisely the same thing. 
He whose consumption exactly equals 
his production, or the cost of whose keep 
is equal to the value of his service, is 
66 



VALUE OF A MAN TO THE GROUP 

worth exactly nothing to the group, that 
is, he contributes exactly nothing to the 
competing power of his group against 
other groups. He is like the memb.er^oL- 
a boat's crew who pulls exactly his own 
weight. He contributes exactly nothing 
to the speed of the boat or the success 
of the crew. The surplus of his produc- 
tion over his consumption, or of his serv- 
ice over his cost, is what adds to the 
equipment of his industrial group for the 
further control over the forces of nature, 
and the further conquest of the material 
environment. That group which so reg- 
ulates the struggle among its individuals 
as to give the greatest competitive power, ,■ V- 
and the largest measure of control over 
productive resources, to those who are 
worth most to the group, that is, to those 
who contribute most to the surplus of 

6 7 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

the group's productive power, is the 
group which will increase its own 
strength most rapidly and will ultimate- 
ly dominate the earth. The group that 
tries other experiments, however beau- 
tiful they may seem to idealists, will be 
beaten in the inter-group struggle. 

The surplus of the individual's pro- 
duction over his consumption does not 

Not who evaporate even when it is left 
owns the - . t , - , 

tools but in his own hands and under 

who con- kjg own C ontrol and owner- 

sumes the 

product ship. From the standpoint of 
the group it is as much a part of its 
competitive power as though it were 
owned by the group instead of by an 
individual. The only question is, Is it 
as likely to be used as productively 
when it is left in the hands of the indi- 
68 



EFFICIENT USE OF TOOLS 

vidual who has met the economic test 
of performance, who has shown, by 
actual performance, the efficiency and 
wisdom to accumulate it, as it would be 
if it were taken out of his hands and 
put into the hands of a public official 
who has been chosen for his position 
by the political test rather than by the 
economic test? When left in the hands 
of the individual who has shown the 
productiveness, the frugality, and the 
foresight to accumulate it, it may, of 
course, be dissipated in riotous living 
through a sudden change in the habits 
of its owner, or his heirs. That is a 
genuine danger. But when put into the 
hands of public officials it is also in 
danger of being dissipated by public 
extravagance of various kinds. There is 
this difference, however; such extrava- 

6 9 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

gance and dissipation on the part of the 
private individual tends to correct it- 
self, because it weakens his competitive 
power under the economic form of strug- 
gle, and will certainly put him, sooner 
or later, out of control of the resources 
of production; whereas, such extrava- 
gance on the part of a public official 
strengthens his competitive power under 
the political form of struggle and tends 
to perpetuate his control over the re- 
sources of production, to the permanent 
weakening of the group. 

It must always be remembered that 
public property is not managed by the 
people themselves, it is managed by 
officials who are chosen, by the method 
of palaver, for that purpose. They who 
believe that this is the only method 
sanctioned by the Christian religion for 
70 



HOW TO CHOOSE MANAGERS 

choosing men for positions of power 
and responsibility ought to make haste 
to rewrite the parable of the talents. In 
the revised form, the redistribution of 
the talents should be determined by 
town-meeting method of argumentation 
and voting. In that case, if the men 
who resembled the poor fellow who 
did n't know how to use his one talent 
happened to outnumber the one who 
knew how to use the five talents so 
efficiently, they would probably vote to 
put one of their own number in charge of 
the whole fund. They would then prob- 
ably feel that a great popular victory had 
been won, and some rhapsodist would 
point to it as an example of industrial 
democracy. If the pig-trough rather 
than the work-bench philosophy hap- 
pened to prevail in the community, and 
7i 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

talents were looked upon as means of 
gratification rather than as tools for the 
productive work of building up the 
Kingdom, the only thing it could logic- 
ally do would be to take the ten talents 
from the plutocrat and give them to the 
public, where the one-talent man could 
get a chance at them, on the ground 
that the maximum efficiency of con- 
sumption demanded greater equality. 
Whatever the philosophy of life hap- 
pened to be, control of the talents would 
pass into the hands of those who could 
win in the political rather than the 
economic form of competition, that is, 
whose skill consisted in getting votes 
rather than in making the talents pro- 
duce other talents. But the question is 
not whether the group is satisfied with 
its choice or not, or whether it is satis- 
72 



VALUE OF A PRODUCTIVE AGENT 

fied with itself or not. Most groups 
are satisfied with themselves and their 
methods of choosing men. Groups al- 
ways call themselves progressive even 
when they are degenerating and going 
straight to perdition. The question is 
whether the group can meet the require- 
ments of the universe or not; whether 
it can compete with other groups under 
the rules of the game laid down by cer- 
tain "ancient, elemental powers," and not 
of its own devising. The group which 
meets this test must adopt the most ac- 
curate possible test of fitness in choos- 
ing men for responsible positions within 
itself. 

That the value of a productive agent 
to its owner is dependent upon the mar- 
gin between its product and its cost or 

73 



X 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

maintenance, is perceived by every one 
The uni- capable of running a business. 

versality ^ horse whose daily earn- 

of the law J 

of value ing power is exactly equal 

to the cost of keeping him, is worth 

exactly nothing. A horse which costs 

a dollar a day and earns a dollar and 

twenty cents is worth exactly twice 

as much as a horse which costs the 

same and earns a dollar and ten cents. 

It is not so generally perceived that this 

principle of valuation is not the result 

of commercial practices but the cause 

of them. This principle of valuation is 

universal, and the commercial practice 

is merely a reflection of it. Though the 

citizen is not owned by the state, and 

therefore has no commercial selling 

price, yet his real value or utility to the 

state or the group to which he belongs 

74 



LAW OF VALUE UNIVERSAL 

is precisely the same as though he had. 
If the state should assert property over 
him and start the commercial practice 
of buying and selling citizens, that would 
not create any new factor in the citi- 
zen's utility provided he kept the same 
habits. It would merely inaugurate the 
practice of estimating whatever utility 
he happened to have, and giving a quan- 
titative expression to it for purposes of 
comparison and exchange. The percep- 
tion of this great economic principle of 
valuation, and the application of it to 
non-commercial objects, such as men 
and moral qualities, is the leading char- 
acteristic of Christ's teaching respecting 
the Kingdom of God. He who gives 
much and takes little, whose service ex- 
ceeds his demands by the largest mar- 
gin, is greatest in the kingdom. The 

75 



J 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

Kingdom of God, as set forth by its 
greatest expounder, is nothing more nor 
less than a kingdom in which this prin- 
ciple of valuation prevails. That is the 
only objective characteristic of the king- 
dom which he ever emphasized. The 
nation which adopts the same principle 
of valuation as its basis of selection will 
approximate as nearly to the ideal of 
the kingdom as is possible in a world 
of physical reality. 

That is the only conception of a king- 
dom of God on earth which is possible 
to a person who believes that this 
physical world is God's world, and that 
the laws of selection now in operation 
are God's laws. If that be true, the kind 
of a group which best meets the con- 
ditions and requirements of this world 
of struggle and survival, and which 

7 6 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 

can therefore win the world in com- 
petition with all other forms and types 
of social organization, must, of logical 
necessity, be God's kingdom. That 
group will survive which evaluates most 
accurately the fitness of its men to help 
in the struggle, and which distributes 
power and responsibility on the basis of 
that fitness. 

This view of the situation will, of 

course, seem very shocking to those 

amiable liberalists who prefer Not a ques- 

their own standards to those ^ on ° , 

likes and 

imposed upon us by the con- dislikes 
ditions of the universe. They are like 
the woman who didn't like to have 
to eat wholesome food, but "liked to 
eat what she 'd d'ruther." If the peo- 
ple like a certain thing and vote for 

77 



v 



t 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

it, why should n't they have it ? They 
may have it, but their liking it will not 
obviate its consequences any more than 
the woman's liking for unwholesome 
food would obviate indigestion. No 
phase of religious liberalism of to-day is 
so demoralizing as the general appeal 
which is being made to popularity by 
presenting only the more pleasing, ami- 
able, and sentimental sides of religion 
and goodness, under the impression, 
probably, that what the people can be 
persuaded to like in the way of religion 
and morality is necessarily good; or that 
if we can agree in liking a certain type 
of religious life that is all we need to 
trouble ourselves about. For a great 
many years certain half-baked moralists, 
of the sociological type, have been dis- 
covering and rediscovering the old and 

7 8 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 

time-worn fact that many of our ideals 
of conduct rest mainly upon custom and 
convention. They therefore jump to the 
conclusion that there is nothing to either 
religion or morality except custom and 
convention, and that one is as good as 
another if it only gets itself adopted by 
the popular will. These brilliant dis- 
coverers of what wise men have always 
known usually assume a scornful atti- 
tude, which wise men never do, toward 
"mere middle-class morality," as though 
middle-class morality were some kind 
of low-down occupation unworthy of 
gentlemen and scholars. 

Against the idea that either conven- 
tion or popularity, either ancient tradi- 
tion or a majority vote, was an accurate 
test of value, Thomas Carlyle, who cer- 
tainly can not be accused of having a 

79 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

commercial bias, never tired of hurling 
the shafts of his grim irony. 

Unanimity of voting, — that will do nothing 
for us if so. Your ship cannot double Cape 
Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship 
may vote this and that, above decks and below, 
in the most harmoniously exquisitely constitu- 
tional manner : the ship, to get around Cape 
Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted 
for, and fixed with adamantine rigor by the an- 
cient Elemental Powers, who are entirely care- 
less how you vote. If you can, by voting, or with- 
out voting, ascertain these conditions, and val- 
iantly conform to them, you will get round the 
Cape : if you cannot, — the ruffian winds will 
blow you ever back again ; the inexorable Ice- 
bergs, dumb privy councilors from Chaos, will 
nudge you with most chaotic u admonition " ; 
you will be flung half -frozen on the Patagonian 
cliffs, or admonished into shivers by your iceberg 
councilors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, 
and will never get round Cape Horn at all ! 
Unanimity on board ship; — yes, indeed, the 
ship's crew may be very unanimous, which doubt- 

80 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 

less, for the time being, will be very comfortable 
to the ship's crew, and to their Phantasm Cap- 
tain, if they have one : but if the tack they unan- 
imously steer upon is guiding them into the belly 
of the Abyss, it will not profit them much! — 
Ships accordingly do not use the ballot-box at all ; 
and they reject the Phantasm species of Captains : 
one wishes much some other Entities — since all 
entities lie under the same rigorous set of laws 
— could be brought to show as much wisdom and 
sense, at least of self-preservation, the Jirst com- 
mand of Nature. . . . 

If a man could shake out of his mind the uni- 
versal noise of political doctors . . . and con- 
sider the matter face to face ... I venture 
to say he would find this a very extraordinary 
method of navigation, whether in the Straits of 
Magellan or in the undiscovered sea of Time. 
To prosper in this world, to gain felicity, victory, 
and improvement, either for a man or a nation, 
there is but one thing requisite, — that the man 
or nation can discern what the true regulations 
of the Universe are in regard to him and his 
pursuit, and can faithfully and steadfastly follow 
these. 

8l 



H- 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

There was never a time when the 
rugged philosophy of the old Scotch- 
man was more needed than it is to-day, 
when so many of us are so good-natur- 
edly tolerant of every variety of con- 
duct as well as of opinion, virtually say- 
ing that all conduct is merely a matter 
of likes and dislikes, or that one cus- 
tom is as good as another provided it 
succeeds in getting itself adopted by 
the popular will. We need a clear per- 
ception of the solemn truth that it is 
quite as essential to the success of a 
group that its customs and conventions 
conform to the laws of the universe, as 
it is to the success of the individual that 
his habits conform to the customs and 
conventions of his group; that a group 
is no more free to adopt whatever cus- 
toms and conventions happen to please 
82 



IS THERE A MORAL ORDER? 

it than the individual is to follow what- 
ever line of conduct happens to please 
his whim. 

We are sometimes told, however, 
that nature is non-moral, or that science 
is unable to discover a moral i s there a 
order in the universe. This m <* alorder 

of the uni- 

can not possibly mean any- verse 
thing more than that nature does not 
seem to conform to our peculiar notions 
of morality, or that the scientist is un- 
able to see in the order of the universe 
anything resembling what he has been 
taught to regard as the moral order. If 
one had been taught a peculiar system 
of hygiene and afterwards discovered 
that nature seemed to pay very little 
attention to his system, he might then 
say that nature was non-hygienic, or 

83 



J 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

that science was unable to discover a 
hygienic order of the universe. That 
would, of course, be a very ridiculous 
thing to say; but it would be no more 
ridiculous than to say that nature knows 
nothing of morality. If we once per- 
ceive that morality is merely social hy- 
giene, and that anything is moral which 
works well for society in the long run, 
and anything is immoral which works 
badly for society in the long run, we 
shall never be guilty of questioning the 
moral order of the universe. We shall 
then say frankly that whatever the order 
of the universe is, that zs the moral order; 
that whatever social customs and con- 
ventions are found to fit into the order of 
the universe, and whatever private con- 
duct is found to permanently strengthen 
the social group, that is morality. 

8 4 



MORAL ORDER AND GOD'S LAW 

That is, after all, the only conception 

of morality which is consistent with the 

highest religious thought. The The moral 

most thoroughgoing religion- order of the 

universe 
ist is he who believes that the and God's 

universe is not only created aw 
by the divine will, but is momentarily 
supported by the perpetually creative 
activity of that will; that all the pheno- 
mena of nature, so called, are merely 
the manifestations of divine activity; 
that the observed uniformities com- 
monly called natural laws are merely 
the observed uniformities of the opera- 
tion of the divine will; and that the 
so-called miraculous, or supernatural, 
is merely an unusual, or extraordinary 
manifestation of the same will. 

While this is the most thoroughgoing 
form of religious belief which exists in 

85 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

the world to-day, very few of the thor- 
oughgoing religionists who accept it are 
willing to accept the conclusions which 
necessarily belong with it, which, in 
fact, cannot possibly be separated from 
it without self-stultification. One of these 
conclusions is that, since we can know 
the divine will only through its manifest- 
ations, a knowledge of that will is to be 
gained only by an inductive study of its 
manifested uniformities, that is, by a sci- 
entific study of what we call for conven- 
ience the laws of nature. If these laws 
are merely the manifestations of the reg- 
ular, normal operations of that will, so 
regular that we come to expect them 
as a matter of course, whereas miracles 
and supernatural events are the rare and 
unusual operations, so rare and unusual 
as to surprise us when they happen, it 
86 



MORAL ORDER AND GOD'S LAW 

must follow that a fuller and more sat- 
isfactory knowledge of the divine will is 
secured through a study of natural laws 
than through a study of the miraculous 
and the supernatural. It is certainly 
more satisfactory to know what to ex- 
pect regularly, every day, and all the 
time, of the being in whom we put our 
faith, than it is to know, even if it be 
true, that on rare occasions some aston- 
ishing manifestation (that is what the 
word miracle means) may occur to sur- 
prise us. However firmly such a relig- 
ionist may believe in miracles, he could 
not logically deny that the emphasis 
should be put upon the uniformities 
rather than upon the things which merely 
cause wonderment because of their rar- 
ity. Moreover, he would have to agree 
that the only real school of theology is 

87 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

a school where the uniformities of the 
divine order were studied by the meth- 
ods of science. Finally, he would have 
to admit that the only person who is en- 
titled to a hearing on any fundamental 
question of theology is the scientist As 
a matter of fact, he is the only man who 
is listened to to-day by the really relig- 
ious, as distinguished from the super- 
stitious, part of our population. 

Another conclusion which forms a 

necessary part of this religious belief, is 

Natural se- that the laws of natural selec- 
tion and tion are mere i y God's regu- 

divine ap- J ° 

proval lar methods of expressing his 

choice and approval. The naturally se- 
lected are the chosen of God. That na- 
tion, or that people, whose average indi- 
vidual character and conduct and whose 
88 



NATURAL SELECTION 

social institutions and customs are such 
as to make them strong in competition 
with other peoples, and able to spread 
over the earth and subdue it and have 
dominion over it, becomes, by that very 
fact, the chosen people, whatever their 
name, language, or religion. 

As to religion, however, the advan- 
tage must be on the side of those who 
put their faith in a God of law and or- 
der, whose will is expressed in the ob- 
served uniformities of the objective uni- 
verse. The whole life of such people 
will consist in an intelligent effort to 
adjust themselves to the will thus ex- 
pressed. They who have other gods be- 
fore this God, who put their faith in a 
god of whim and caprice, who expect to 
win the favor of their god, and by this 
favor, success for themselves, through 

8 9 



-V 



-■*■-:." 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

charms, incantations, amulets, rabbits' 
feet, and comet pills, will fail, and 
their sins will be visited upon their 
children as long as their children last 
— say for three or four generations, 
that is, until their more efficient com- 
petitors drive them to the wall. More- 
over, that mental attitude which thinks 
or speaks lightly of this God of law and 
order, which imagines that He can be 
cheated or eluded, which impudently 
follows its own whims and will not con- 
sider the awful responsibility of free- 
dom, also handicaps the people who 
possess it. 

If we proceed down through the deca- 
logue and try to interpret each com- 
mand in the light of real experience 
with the objective world, we shall find, 
to our surprise perhaps, that every one 
90 



NATURAL SELECTION 

of them is a part of the economy of the 
universe. It is only when they are in- 
terpreted in the light of an unreal and 
artificial kind of sentimentalism, some- 
times miscalled spirituality, that they 
cease to impress the hard-headed, un- 
emotional, but constructive minds who 
are, after all, the real builders of civiliz- 
ation. When properly interpreted, each 
command becomes a statement of a law 
of nature. Even the tenth and least un- 
derstood of the commandments conveys 
a clear and definite economic meaning 
to any one who has, to begin with, the 
work-bench philosophy of life, though 
it is foolishness to any one with the pig- 
trough philosophy. 

This view of life will seem like sacri- 
lege to a great many excellent people 
who have been brought up in a faith 

9 1 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

which emphasizes the so-called super- 
natural rather than the natural, in other 
words, the rare and exceptional manifest- 
ations of God's will rather than the regu- 
lar and uniform manifestations. But it 
is not sacrilege, it is not irreligion; it is 
red-hot religion. It is the only religion 
which can take hold upon a mind trained 
to scientific habits and saturated with 
modern evolutionary philosophy, and 
make it feel "Woe is unto me if I 
preach not the gospel." Let it once be 
clearly understood that obedience to 
God's will as revealed to the scientist 
normally brings success to a nation, in 
other words, that righteousness is that 
which exalteth a nation, that righteous- 
ness is therefore loyalty and sin is dis- 
loyalty, and who could help becoming 
a preacher of righteousness. 
92 



ADAPTATION AND OBEDIENCE 

Beginning with the concept of a God 

who expresses his will through the 

observed uniformities of the 4J 

Adaptation 

world of actual experience, it and obedi- 

CHC6 

follows as a matter of course X 

that they who obey this will most com- 
pletely, that is, who adapt themselves 
most completely to their world environ- 
ment, must succeed best, and become, 
by that very fact, the children of God. 
But they must not think that they hold 
this position by any permanent tenure. 
It is a tenure which must be earned 
through successful competition by every 
succeeding generation. A people which 
imagines that it has earned this position 
once and for all will find itself most 
ruthlessly dispossessed of its inheritance ^ 
whenever another people arises who 
obey the objectively manifested will of 

93 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

God more completely than they. This 
applies not only to a people or a nation 
as a whole, but to those individuals 
within the nation who succeed for a 
time through the practice of the eco- 
nomic virtues. A successful army has 
often, in the history of the world, be- 
come demoralized by its own success, 
has allowed the severity of its discipline 
to relax, has given way to the luxurious 
and weakening vices, and, as a result, 
has been defeated by some of its former 
antagonists whose very adversity con- 
tributed to their own discipline and, 
through this, to their final success. A 
successful nation in the industrial strug- 
gle has sometimes been demoralized in 
precisely the same way. Through a se- 
vere discipline in the practice of the eco- 
nomic virtues, wealth has accumulated; 

94 



ADAPTATION AND OBEDIENCE 

but the temptation to luxury and ease 
has proved too strong, and the economic 
virtues have given way to the uneco- 
nomic vices, the pig-trough philosophy 
has dominated, and the economic ad- 
vantage is speedily won by another na- 
tion, not yet arrived at the luxurious 
stage. Even within a nation the same 
process has long been observed. " From 
shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves it is only 
three generations," does not tell the 
whole truth. The course is rather from 
shirt-sleeves to extermination, and three 
generations is about the average time 
required for completing the course 
unless the family is disciplined by a 
religion which holds it true to the pro- 
ductive life and the work-bench philo- 
sophy. 



95 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

In this observed uniformity the Pro- 
testant churches may learn an awful 

The crisis ^ esson - It * s no accident that 
of Protest- every Protestant country has 

antism is 

an econo- outstripped every Catholic 
mic crisis coun try, just as every Catholic 
country had outstripped every pagan 
country. Nor is it any accident that in 
Protestant countries religious people, 
especially those of the stricter sort, have 
as a rule outstripped the irreligious 
people. If these things be accidents, 
they occur with an amazing uniformity 
which would be hard to explain. 

The stricter discipline in essentials, 
and the less strict insistence upon non- 
essentials, which characterize the lead- 
ing Protestant churches, have resulted 
in a greater economy of energy and 
more productive lives among Protest- 

9 6 



AN ECONOMIC CRISIS 

ants than among Catholics, and among 
religious than among irreligious people. 
It would be a poor kind of religion 
which would not produce this result. 
But this very discipline in the product- 
ive virtues may prove the undoing of 
the Protestant churches. It has brought 
a degree of success and prosperity which 
no people has yet been able to with- 
stand. The Catholic Church having al- 
ready failed in this respect, it is com- 
pelled to fall back more and more upon 
demagogic arguments, and to try to win 
back by talk what its people are losing 
in the contest of performance. Left to 
the test of productive achievement, its 
people would be beaten more and more; 
but in the field of palaver, it is still 
strong. It can still put forth large claims 
to a doubtful historic origin and a past 

97 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

in some respects glorious. But its past 
will not save it. Unless it can make its 
people excel in the field of productive 
achievement, they will become more 
and more the hewers of wood and the 
drawers of water for their more intel- 
lectually and morally capable compet- 
itors. If they succeed in any country in 
dominating through talk and politics 
over the more productive non-Catholics, 
then that country will follow in their 
downward course all the other countries 
where Catholic influences dominate. 
Your ship cannot round Cape Horn 
through reliance upon its historic origin 
any more than by its excellent plans of 
voting. 

As between religious and irreligious 
people inProtestantcountries,thegreater 

9 8 



THE CHURCHES AND THE MASSES 

productivity of the former is shown in 

what is sometimes referred Thesep- 

to as the separation of the ^ 

churches from the masses, churches 

from the 
This separation has two differ- masses a 

ent aspects, and each aspect J^^ 
has a special significance of result 
its own. In one sense, a separation is 
what was to have been expected and de- 
sired, if by separation we mean the larger 
prosperity of church people. If a relig- 
ion is worth anything it ought to be a 
means of conserving human energy, of 
avoiding waste and dissipation, of stimu- 
lating the productive virtues. People 
with such a religion could scarcely help 
prospering out of proportion to people 
who waste their energies in sin and dis- 
sipati on — that is what sin is, and nothing 
is sin except waste and dissipation. But 

99 



>c 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

this aspect of the separation of the 
church from the masses is displeasing 
to those who are beaten, and their nat- 
ural recourse is talk, muckraking, and 
palaver. If the government were ineffi- 
cient enough to allow it, there would 
also be recourse to the still more prim- 
itive method of war to win back what 
the irreligious have lost by being beaten 
in the higher struggle of productive 
achievement. 

It is just at this point that the relig- 
ious liberal is in greatest danger of dis- 
playing his weakness and vacillation, if 
he be weak and vacillating. He is under 
peculiar temptation to join in this dem- 
agogic cry against the separation of the 
churches from the masses. If religion is 
merely a matter of likes and dislikes, it 
would sound finely democratic to talk 
ioo 



PROSPERITY OF THE RIGHTEOUS 

about the iniquities of a world in which 
the people whom we happen to like are 
beaten by the people whom we happen 
to dislike. If I like the gay sport and 
dislike the stern Puritan, I may be very 
much disturbed when I observe that the 
gay sport fails as a rule, except in poli- 
tics, whereas the stern Puritan succeeds 
under the test of productive achieve- 
ment. Or if I like the amiable spendthrift 
and dislike the frugal, hard-working 
Pennsylvania German, and yet observe 
that in spite of my likes and dislikes the 
amiable spendthrift goes to the wall 
while the Pennsylvania German is buy- 
ing out his neighbors and broadening 
his acres, I may get very sarcastic in my 
comments upon the social arrangement 
in which my likes and dislikes seem to 
count for so little. Seeing that what I 

IOI 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

like fails and what I dislike succeeds 
with such uniformity, I might even reach 
the conclusion that this is not God's but 
the Devil's world; for, of course, God, 
being all wise, would agree with me, 
and if this were His world He would 
give success to that which I approve 
and failure to that which I disapprove. 
If such were my attitude, I might, lack- 
ing a sense of humor, even claim for my- 
self the inheritance of the earth which 
is promised to the meek. 

But there is another aspect of this 

separation of the churches from the 

^_ masses which is not so credit- 

Two as- 
pects of the able to the churches. Having 
separation f . , . - £ 

achieved such a degree ot 

prosperity through the practice of the 

economic virtues, they show signs of 

102 



ASPECTS OF SEPARATION 

succumbing to the temptations of the 
pig-trough philosophy, of giving way 
to luxury, pride, and ostentation, and 
thus erecting a barrier of pride and ex- 
clusiveness between themselves and the 
masses. This barrier of pride and ex- 
clusiveness is not only deplorable in 
itself; it is also a sign of the demoraliz- 
ation of the church and its people. The 
worst result of this demoralization is 
not the aloofness of the masses from the 
church; they who are beaten by men of 
a severer discipline invariably dislike 
that discipline and affect to despise it. 
That need not disturb the church. The 
worst result is that this demoralization 
will destroy the very prosperity of the 
churches and their people. The real 
crisis in the life of the church comes 
when it sees that its discipline and pro- 
103 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

ductiveness have brought their normal 
result, and it begins to consider what to 
do with the fruits of its own prosperity. 
The question then arises, What is the 
use of maintaining this strict discipline 
in the productive virtues ? Have we not 
already secured the means of enjoy- 
ment? Is not that the end of effort? 
Why keep up the struggle when we 
have already attained the end of the 
struggle? When these questions arise, 
the work-bench philosophy is giving way 
to the pig-trough philosophy, and ruin 
is impending. That was precisely the 
trouble with a certain rich man who 
said to his soul, " Soul, thou hast much 
goods laid up for many years; take 
thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." 
Be it observed that the condemnation of 
this rich man came not because of his 
104 



THE TRUE CHURCH 

riches but because of his attitude toward 
them. To him they had ceased to be 
tools and had become means of ease, 
luxury, and self-gratification. He had 
fallen from grace, that is, he had given 
up the work-bench philosophy and 
adopted the pig-trough philosophy. At 
that point he lost his soul. 

Because no people has yet succeeded 
in withstanding the temptation to turn 
from the productive life to the which is 
life of ease and enjoyment ^ e ^ 

J J church is a 

when the productive life had question of 

brought its normal results, is an( j not of 
no reason why it may never the past 
be done. But here is the present pro- 
blem of the Protestant churches. They 
have supplied a discipline which fitted 
their people admirably for adversity and 
105 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

poverty, and which enabled them to rise 
out of these conditions. Are they able 
now to supply a discipline which will 
fit their people for prosperity, and hold 
them true to the productive life when a 
life of ease and luxury is possible? If 
they cannot, nothing can save them. A 
nation, church, or community cannot 
live on its past any more than an indi- 
vidual can. The fate of the Jews ought 
to teach us that. Nothing could be more 
futile than to argue that because the 
church is God's own institution, there- 
fore it cannot fail. Whether it is God's 
institution or not will be determined by 
whether it fails or not. It is not a ques- 
tion of origin, but a question of outcome. 
Which is the true church is not a ques- 
tion of the past; it is a question of the 
future. It is not a question of history; 
1 06 



THE TRUE CHURCH 

it is a question of future adaptation and 
selection. That will prove itself to be 
the true church which eventually wins 
the world in. fair and free competition, 
and in that competition there are no 
favors. Moreover, God is not to be 
cheated by demagogic successes. Sup- 
pose one church should win this country 
in a mere demagogic contest for popu- 
larity; this country would then start on 
its downward career, and eventually 
succumb to a country with a more pro- 
ductive and less demagogic religion. 
This may take a long time, but there is 
plenty of time. The world belongs by 
a law of nature, which is the only kind 
of divine right, to that church which 
gives its people the discipline which 
will enable them to people the earth, to 
subdue it, and hold dominion over it. 
107 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

The church which eventually achieves 
this result will have proved itself to be 
the Church of God. 

There is little likelihood that this vic- 
tory can go to a church which empha- 
sizes its historic antiquity as its chief 
claim to support. In fact, it is unlikely 
that it can go to any church which relies 
mainly on its appeals to the crowd. There 
will always be muckraking demagogues 
who can beat it in that kind of a contest 
in the field of talk. Nor is it likely that 
it can go to a church that encourages its 
people to rely upon amulets, relics, the 
intercession of priests, or miraculous in- 
tervention of any kind. Any pagan re- 
ligion can present better statistics in sup- 
port of its claims to this kind of power. 
Even the notorious Dowieites can show 
more miraculous cures. The advantage 
108 



THE TRUE CHURCH 

is likely to lie, rather, on the side of those 
churches which teach their people to 
rely upon exact scientific knowledge of 
the laws of nature or the observed uni- 
formities of God's will, and not to rely 
in their conceit upon breaks in those 
uniformities. But the important thing to 
remember is that the field is still open, 
and new contestants for the position of 
the true church may enter at any time. 
The question will be decided by the fu- 
ture and not by the past. The victory 
may go to some church already strong; 
it may go to the Christian Scientists ; it 
may go to the Mormons; or it may go 
to some church as yet unborn. Only one 
thing is certain, it will go to the most 
efficient; not the most efficient in the 
field of talk, but the most efficient in the 
field of production. 

109 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

The efficiency of its discipline is the 
only ground upon which a church has 

The an } r right to appeal f or approval 

grounds of anc j support. The church that 

the appeal 

of the true can say to the unchurched, 
church « 0ur way of Hfe is best be _ 

cause it works best. Our people are effi- 
cient, prosperous, and happy because 
we are a body who aid one another in 
j the productive life. We waste none of 

our substance in vice, luxury, or osten- 
tation. We do not dissipate our energy 
in brawling, gambling, or unwholesome 
habits. We conserve our resources of 
body and mind and devote them to the 
upbuilding of the Kingdom of God, 
which is not a mystical but a real king- 
dom. It is a body of people dominated 
by ideals of productivity, which" is mu- 
tual service. We do not strive for the 
no 



APPEAL OF THE TRUE CHURCH 

things which satisfy but for a moment 
and then leave a bad taste, we strive for 
the things which build us up and enable 
us and our children to be strong, to flour- 
ish, and to conquer. We strive to make 
ourselves worthy to receive the world 
by fitting ourselves to use the world 
more productively than others. We be- 
lieve that obedience to God means obe- 
dience to the laws of nature, which are 
but the uniform manifestations of His 
will; and we try by painstaking study to 
acquire the most complete and exact 
knowledge of that will, in order that we 
may conform ourselves to it. We believe 
that reverence for God is respect for these 
laws, that meekness is teachableness and 
willingness to learn by observation and 
experience. By practicing this kind of 
meekness, or teachableness, we believe 
in 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

that we shall inherit the earth j whereas 
the unmeek, the unteachable, the pig- 
headed, who are dominated by pride of 
tradition, shall not. We offer you hard 
work, frugal fare, severe discipline, but 
a share in the conquest of the world for 
the religion of the productive life." 

The church which could make this 
appeal without exaggeration might be 
temporarily less successful in winning 
converts than some others, but such 
as it did win would be worth having. 
Every convert would be won from the 
unproductive to the productive life. Its 
people, by the conservation of their en- 
ergies, would extend their power and 
influence through their success in the 
productive form of competition, even 
if they were less successful in the windy 
contest of talk and palaver. But the sons 
112 



APPEAL OF THE TRUE CHURCH 

of Belial would, of course, begin to wag 
their heads and put out their tongues 
and write derisive articles for the pop- 
ular magazines. The prosperity of this 
lean and efficient congregation would 
call forth resentment, and men whose 
eyes stick out with fatness would begin 
to talk piously about the materialism of 
the church; gentlemen of elegant leis- 
ure would talk, over their mint-juleps 
and clear Havanas, about the deplor- 
able separation of the church from the 
masses; socialistic speakers, in rooms 
foul with bad air, beer, and tobacco, 
would denounce the selfishness and 
greed which was putting these people 
of clean and wholesome habits ahead 
of themselves; and even some church- 
men, whose very clothes reek with the 
evidences of self-indulgence, would ex- 
"3 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

press great concern on account of the 
decay of spirituality. But this church 
would be founded upon the rock of eco- 
nomic efficiency, and the gates of hell 
should not prevail against it. 

But before any one expresses disap- 
proval of rich men's churches, he would 

.. -. - do well to consider that there 
Two kinds 

of rich are two kinds of rich men's 

men's and 

poor men's churches. There is the church 

churches that teac hes the productive 
life and disciplines its members in the 
productive virtues. Such a church could 
not help becoming a rich men's church, 
because it would be making its people 
rich and prosperous. Not to become a 
rich men's church in this sense is a 
disgrace and an evidence of failure to 
perform its mission. Then there is the 
114 



RICH MEN'S CHURCHES 

church which becomes a rich men's 
church because it is a church into which 
a certain type of rich men like to get as 
soon as they can afford it, just as they 
like to get into certain fashionable clubs. 
Criticism of this kind of a rich men's 
church is well directed, but it should 
be discriminating. Moreover, such rich 
men's churches are bringing themselves 
to an end through race suicide. 

Similarly, there are two kinds of poor 
men's churches. The church which 
keeps its people ignorant and inefficient 
will always be a poor men's church; but 
instead of boasting it should be ashamed 
of the fact. The church, however/which 
ministers to a neighborhood where poor 
people live, but gives them a discipline 
which enables them to rise out of pov- 
erty, and passes them on to other neigh- 

"5 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

borhoods to make room for other poor 
people who are coming in, and by re- 
peating this process continues to minis- 
ter to the needs of poor people, but of 
an ever-changing body of poor people, 
is the only kind of a poor men's church 
to be proud of. 

Lest this be interpreted as a glorifi- 
cation of riches in the vulgar sense, let 
us repeat once more that wealth in the 
hands of such people is not means of 
gratification, but merely a surplus of 
productive energy, stored up for use in 
gaining a further mastery of the forces 
of nature and a further conquest of the 
earth through greater and greater pro- 
ductive efficiency. It does not consist 
wholly in material instruments. It may 
consist largely in sources of inspiration 
to high endeavor, in means of stimulat- 
xx6 



WAY OF TEMPORAL SALVATION 

ing the productive virtues, in books and 
instruments of precision for the exten- 
sion of the knowledge of and control 
over the forces of nature. 

Every unfortunate and oppressed peo- 
ple has, well within its reach, this safe 

and sure means of deliverance ^ 

The way 

from its bondage, if it only of temporal 
have the wisdom to see its op- 
portunity, the faith to lay hold upon it, 
and the courage, patience, and fortitude 
to persist. But everywhere such people 
have been impatient of God's slow but 
safe way, and have sought to take the 
kingdom of heaven by violence. The 
Negroes in America have their preach- 
ers of an emotional and mystical relig- 
ion, they have also their fiery political 
agitators, and they have Booker T. 
117 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

Washington teaching them the product- 
ive life. Most of us are wise enough to 
see that for them the way of the pro- 
ductive life is the way of wisdom; but 
we are not always wise enough to ap- 
ply the same rule to ourselves. 

The Irish people have their elabor- 
ate and overpowering ceremonial re- 
ligion, and they have also their fiery 
political leaders, trying to rouse them 
to political resistance, neither of which 
will do them any good. They will re- 
ceive their political freedom, if they 
receive it at all, as a gift from the more 
productive and powerful race which 
rules them, and which holds them in 
the hollow of its hand, having complete 
power of life and death over them. But 
they have also Sir Horace Plunkett, 
teaching them the productive life. 
118 



WAY OF TEMPORAL SALVATION 

Therein lies their salvation. Even the 
gift of political independence would do 
them no good unless they were able to 
use their energies productively; where- 
as, if they were as economically product- 
ive as their neighbors across the Chan- 
nel, among whom greatness is measured 
by production, that is by service, rather 
than by talk, they would not have to 
receive their independence as a gift, 
because they would be able to take it 
without begging for it. 

The Russian people have their intri- 
cate and tinsellated religion, and their 
fiery revolutionists, but none of these 
things can help them while they remain 
sodden with ignorance and vice. They 
had their Tolstoy, teaching them the 
productive life, and therein and no- 
where else lies their sure salvation. 
119 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

The Jews nineteen centuries ago 
were longing passionately for deliver- 
ance from the Roman yoke, which was 
a real and not a mystical yoke. The 
priests were praying and the people 
were wailing in the temple, calling upon 
God to deliver them; but deliverance 
never comes in that way. They also had 
their fiery revolutionary leaders, incit- 
ing them to revolt. That was tried, but 
it failed miserably. One man, a hard- 
headed Galilean carpenter, who had 
learned through the handling of things 
that this world is under a rule of law, 
saw that deliverance was not to come 
in either of those ways. Like all other 
desirable results, it would come in har- 
mony with the laws of economic causa- 
tion, that is, in harmony with the uni- 
form operation of God's will, and in no 
1 20 



WAY OF TEMPORAL SALVATION 

other way. Accordingly, He began 
preaching the gospel of the productive 
life. If they had listened to his message 
and followed his teaching, they would 
have laid deep the economic founda- 
tions of the kingdom of heaven. They 
would have conserved their energies 
and wasted none of them in idleness, 
in quarreling, in dissipation, in vice, in 
luxury, or in fruitless talk and palaver. 
Every ounce of energy would have 
been utilized in productive service. A 
people who would thus conserve and 
utilize their energies would eventually 
grow so strong that no human power 
could hold them in subjection. But to 
live true to such a life of productive 
service required more spiritual vision 
and moral discipline than the Jews pos- 
sessed. They were under the domin- 
121 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

ation of the talkers, and the greatest 
among them were the biggest talkers 
rather than the largest producers. Con- 
sequently they rejected his message, 
and were in consequence themselves 
thrown on the scrap heap of nations, 
not by a special manifestation of divine 
wrath, but by the normal working of 
economic law, which is merely the nor- 
mal and uniform operation of God's wilL 

These lessons of experience the la- 
boring classes of to-day may well take 
What the, to heart. They also have their 
^rSS* re % ious leaders persuading 

do for the them to rely upon the rare and 
laboring 

classes exceptional, rather than the 
normal and uniform operations of the 
divine will; that is, upon the so-called 
supernatural rather than natural laws. 
122 



THE LABORING CLASSES 

Anybody ought to know that it is safer 
to rely upon the regular, normal, and 
uniform operation of God's will than to 
expect help from some irregular and 
astonishing manifestation. They also 
have their fiery agitators inciting them 
to revolt and revolution. The experi- 
ence of the world furnishes no reason 
for expecting help from this source. 
But if they had leaders who would 
teach them the principles of the pro- 
ductive life, and if they had the wisdom 
and the moral courage to follow, they 
would eventually achieve an independ- 
ence of their own. 

If a preacher of righteousness who had 
the spiritual vision to see that righteous- 
ness and productiveness are synony- 
mous could start with a congregation of 
laboring men, however poor they were 
123 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

to begin with, and could actually lead 
them in the way of the productive life, 
his congregation would become eco- 
nomically independent as surely as day 
follows night They would learn, under 
his ministration, to adopt those habits 
which conserve energy and maintain 
the highest efficiency of body and mind, 
training their productive powers as 
carefully and as religiously as a pugilist 
or a football player trains his destructive 
powers. They would study to improve 
their efficiency as carefully as a boxer 
studies the science of self-defense, or an 
artist the principles of his art. They 
would study teamwork as carefully as 
a crew or a football team. They would 
waste no energy in brawling or in un- 
productive contests. They would make 
sacrifices in order that their children 
124 



THE LABORING CLASSES 

might receive the best possible educa- 
tion, the kind of education which would 
increase their productivity and useful- 
ness to the maximum. In three genera- 
tions this would be a rich men's church, 
and would have the honor of having 
home-made rich men instead of having 
acquired them ready-made. Meanwhile 
they who had not had the courage, the 
patience, and the constructive faith to 
follow his teaching would still be in- 
veighing against the injustice of society, 
and pointing to this church as an exam- 
ple of the way in which the churches 
were forsaking the poor and catering to 
the rich. 

But where is there a preacher of right- 
eousness with such a vision and such 
a faith? He is found here and there 
among the humbler and less pretentious 

"5 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

sects, such as the Pennsylvania Germans, 
the Methodists, the Scotch Presbyter- 
ians, and the Mormons. But among the 
conspicuous preachers of the more fash- 
ionable sects such faith is not to be 
found. 

The Kingdom of God is a kingdom 
of productive power at work, and not a 
kingdom of aesthetic enjoyment or emo- 
tional happiness, much less a kingdom 
of talk. It therefore requires no mysti- 
cal interpretation to give credence to 
the promise of prosperity to those who 
seek the kingdom of heaven upon earth. 
Neither does it require any miracle to 
bring about the literal fulfillment of that 
promise, for it would come about through 
the normal working of economic law. 
When all the latent energy of a people 
is made active, when it is directed in the 
126 



THE PRODUCTIVE LIFE 

most intelligent manner toward the satis- 
faction of real human needs, when none 
of it is wasted or dissipated in injuri- 
ous, antagonistic, or destructive effort, 
such a people will attain to a degree of 
real prosperity hitherto unknown. 

If the Christian fellowship becomes a 
fellowship for the promotion of the pro- 
ductive life, then Christians The fellow- 
will become more productive ^^J® 
farmers, mechanics, and busi- ^ 
ness and professional men than non- 
Christians. If that result should be 
achieved, Christians will eventually own 
the farms, fill the shops and the offices, 
and direct the business affairs of the 
world. If that should happen, this will be 
a Christian world; otherwise it will not. 

Man has been enabled to hold domin- 
127 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

ion over the rest of the animal creation 
by reason of the greater efficiency with 
which he has directed his energy. His 
greater efficiency has been due, first, to 
his greater knowledge of and control 
over the forces of nature; second, to his 
greater self-discipline whereby he has 
subordinated his immediate but lesser 
interests to his more remote but larger 
interests; third , to his greater sociabil- 
ity, whereby he has combined his efforts 
with those of his fellow men and worked 
with them for a common purpose. Any 
part of the human race which possesses 
superior efficiency of these three kinds 
will be able to hold dominion over the 
rest of mankind as surely as over the 
beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, 
and the fish of the sea. Any part of the 
human race which falls behind in any 
128 



HIGHER AND LOWER FAITH 

of these three particulars must give way 
before their more productive neighbors 
as surely as the Indian has given way 
before the European. This is the law of 
nature, which is the law of God, to deny 
which is to deny that this is God's world. 

Belief in the general uniformity, the 
certainty, and the beneficence of the laws 
of God is the highest kind of m . . . 

& The higher 

faith. That is a lesser faith vs. the 

... t . lower faith 

which trusts in charms, incan- 
tations, rabbits' feet, comet pills, amu- 
lets, priestly intercession, and other de- 
vices for protection. The resort to such 
devices is based upon fear that the laws 
of God may fail us in an emergency, 
that His grace be not sufficient for us. 
The faith which really removes moun- 
tains, the only kind of faith which ever 
129 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

did remove mountains, is faith in the 
calculability of God's laws, and a will- 
ingness to venture out in obedience to 
them. This is the faith upon which 
great engineering feats, great productive 
business enterprises, and great discov- 
eries in science are based. The world 
belongs, by a law of nature, that is, by 
the law of God, to those nations and 
peoples who possess this faith in the 
highest degree. 

They who fully realize the universal- 
ity of God's laws, otherwise known as 
Who are natural laws, who are ready to 
the meek? i earn w hat these laws are, and 
who willingly submit to them, are the 
meek. They do not have the conceit to 
think that God will change the regular 
order of his procedure for their bene- 
130 



WHO ARE THE MEEK? 

fit. They say, " Thy will be done," and 
then try to adapt themselves to that will. 
That they shall inherit the earth is a 
scientific proposition, a statement of a 
law of nature. The unmeek are they 
who will not be taught, who are wise 
in their own conceit, who stubbornly 
persist in cherished error, who proudly 
defy the laws of God, who raise the puny 
arm of rebellion against the order of 
nature, or who have such a sense of 
their own importance as to expect that 
God will change the regular order of 
his procedure for their benefit. Instead 
of adapting themselves to His will as 
revealed in the laws of nature, they try 
to impose their wills upon Him. Since 
the meek are to inherit the earth, all 
these unmeek are to be exterminated by 
the process of natural selection. 

131 



X 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

Reverence is an appreciation of the 
righteousness and beneficence of the uni- 
verse of law, a recognition of 
Reverence 

natural law as divine law. Ir- 
reverence is the spirit which scoffs at all 
law. Reverence pays. 

The productive life is the life of 
faith, of meekness, and of reverence, as 
these terms have just been defined. The 
church, as a school of faith, of meek- 
ness, and of reverence, may be sure that 
its mission is eternal if its work is 
blessed with the success which the pro- 
ductive life brings. This success will be 
the visible sign of divine approval. The 
people who lead the productive life most 
completely, and who flourish most in 
consequence, become by that very fact 
the chosen people of God. The people 
who lead the unproductive life, and who 

I3 2 



THE CHOSEN PEOPLE 

fail in consequence, become, by that very 
fact, the rejected of God. 

The Fellowship of the Productive 
Life is the highest form of Christian 
fellowship. It is the fellow- The digci _ 
ship of those who strive to cul- P line of the 

fellowship 

tivate among themselves the f the pro- 
constructive faith which sows, ductive me 
builds, and invests in productive enter- 
prises. They who belong to this fellow- 
ship must consume in order that they 
may produce, limiting consumption to 
the amount necessary for the highest 
efficiency, and using all surplus wealth 
as tools for further productive service; 
but regarding as corrupt all wealth not 
earned by productive service, whether 
it be in the hands of the rich or the poor. 
They regard all productive work as of 

133 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

equal sanctity, and enter upon the work 
of the shops, the farms, the business 
houses, and the political offices with the 
same religious zeal as that which now 
actuates those who preach to the heathen, 
or minister to the sick. The prosperity 
which must necessarily come to this 
fellowship means greater and greater 
power for service, and not greater and 
greater means of self-gratification. 

Again, this is the fellowship of those 
who strive to cultivate among themselves 
the teachable spirit, and to eliminate 
from among themselves all stubborn and 
ostentatious pride in preconceived ideas 
and traditions, as well as in wealth and 
position. It is also the fellowship which 
strives to cultivate the spirit of reverence 
for all natural or divine law, and for the 
justice of its results. They who belong 
134 



THE CHURCH MILITANT 

to this fellowship cannot be covetous 
or jealous of the success of those who 
prosper through obedience to this law. 
They realize that under the productive 
life greatness is the result of productive 
service, and the greatest is he who ren- 
ders the greatest service or produces the 
most over and above what he consumes. 

Again, the Fellowship of the Pro- 
ductive Life is the new conception of the 
Church militant. It is the new The C hurch 
crusade of the Church militant v* 11 ^ 
for the conquest of the world. In season 
and out of season is the call to be made 
for men to abandon the unproductive 
and take up the productive life. No hu- 
man being is to be regarded as beyond 
the reach of this call. But, they who 
do not respond to it but persist in their 

135 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

unproductiveness, are doomed, which 
means damned. They refuse to conform 
to the universal laws of success, and na- 
ture damns them. It is nature's retribu- 
tion — and God's. They are the barren 
fig trees which cumber the ground. 

This new crusade ought to fire the 
zeal of the Christian as no old crusader's 
zeal was ever fired. The task is not the 
trivial one of rescuing the holy sepul- 
chre from the hands of the infidel, but 
the vastly greater and more worthy one 
of rescuing the farms, the shops, the 
business affairs, and the governments of 
the world from the hands of the un- 
productive, which means the immoral, 
the un-Christian. This task is not to be 
achieved by the destructive methods of 
the old crusader, but by the productive 
methods of modern industry and social 
136 



WHAT THE FELLOWSHIP OFFERS 

service, and the cultivation of rever- 
ence for the laws thereof. If Christians 
make themselves worthy to receive the 
world by making themselves more pro- 
ductive than others, — able to use the 
resources of the world to better advan- 
tage than others, — then the world will 
be actually delivered into their hands, 
not by miraculous intervention, that is, 
not by some sudden and unusual man- 
ifestation of divine power, but by the 
sure process of economic law, which is, 
properly understood, the regular, uni- 
form, everyday manifestation of divine 
power. 

What attractions does the Fellowship 
of the Productive Life offer ? 

What the 

To young men it offers days fellowship 
of toil and nights of study. It 

137 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

offers frugal fare and plain clothes. 
It offers lean bodies, hard muscles, 
horny hands, or furrowed brows. It 
offers wholesome recreation to the ex- 
tent necessary to maintain the highest 
efficiency. It offers the burdens of bring- 
ing up large families and training them 
in the productive life. It offers the obli- 
gation of using all wealth as tools and 
not as means of self-gratification. It does 
not offer the insult of a life of ease, or 
aesthetic enjoyment, or graceful con- 
sumption, or emotional ecstasy. It offers, 
instead, the joy of productive achieve- 
ment, of participating in the building of 
the Kingdom of God. 

To young women also it offers toil, 
study, frugal fare, and plain clothes, such 
as befit those who are honored with a 
great and difficult task. It offers also the 

138 



WHAT THE FELLOWSHIP OFFERS 

pains, the burdens and responsibilities 
of motherhood. It offers the obligation 
of perpetuating in succeeding genera- 
tions the principles of the productive 
life made manifest in themselves. It does 
not offer the insult of a life of pride and 
vanity. It offers the joy of achievement, 
of self-expression, not alone in dead 
marble and canvas, but also in the plas- 
tic lives of children to be shaped and 
monlded into those ideal forms of mind 
and heart which their dreams have pic- 
tured. In these ways it offers to them 
also the joy of participating in the build- 
ing of the Kingdom of God. 

When did the young men of our race 
ever fail to respond to a call to sacrifice 
when they could see a connection be- 
tween the sacrifice and a result worth 
achieving ? Was there ever a time in 

139 



THE RELIGION WORTH HAVING 

the history of our race when young wo- 
men were not eager to respond to a call 
to such a life of toil and service when 
coupled with such a mission and such 
a vision ? 



THE END 



@6e ftitoer?t&e J&re££ 

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



JEB 20 Wist 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



FEB 20 If*? 



